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Southwestern Historical Quarterly

Tell Me a Story, Sing Me a Song .... By William A. Owens. (Austin:University of Texas Press, 1983. Pp. vii+328. Acknowledg-ments, index. $25, cloth; $12.50, paper.)If William A. Owens is not properly appreciated as one of Texas's"classic" writers it may be that he has tried and succeeded too well intoo many genres. Rather than making his contribution to Texas let-ters solely as novelist, folklorist, editor, or writer of autobiography,he has, over the years, produced distinguished works in all these areas.His Texas Folk Songs (1950, extensively revised 1976) is the definitivestudy of the ballads, songs, and spirituals of the region. His firstnovel, Walking on Borrowed Land (1954), is one of the two or threebest novels written by a Texan. His first volume of autobiography,This Stubborn Soil (1966), is generally agreed to be the finest book ofits kind to come out of the state; indeed, it is an American classic. Inaddition, he has two other novels, several nonfiction books, and a sec-ond volume of autobiography-all of high quality. And yet Owensis not always listed with Katherine Anne Porter, J. Frank Dobie, RoyBedichek, and Walter Prescott Webb-often not with John Graves,Larry McMurtry, and William Humphrey-as one of Texas's verybest writers. When his name is not mentioned in the best company ofTexas writers an injustice is being done, for his work deserves to rankat the very top in fiction, folklore, and history.William A. Owens's value to Texas letters is plain to see in hismost recent volume, Tell Me a Story, Sing Me a Song.... The book isimportant not so much because it carries Owens's own life story for-ward by a decade, but because it is a record of folk life in Texas in thethirties. The book tells of Owens's folksong collecting among theanglos, blacks, and ethnics of Texas during the years of the GreatDepression. Owens, for much of that time a faculty member at TexasA8cM, traveled the state and into Louisiana and Mexico to record onaluminum discs the songs of the people. As the book shows, he re-corded more than the songs: he captured the speech patterns, customs,folk beliefs, and ceremonies of Texans. Tell Me a Story gives thereader a real feeling for life in Texas during the hard times; it alsogives the reader a picture of the young Owens who went among "allsorts and conditions" of people, often as a stranger, to help them sal-vage some of their heritage. Among the blacks especially, Owenswalked "on borrowed land" as he tried to get them to sing "the oldsongs," for many of his informants were trying to put behind themthe works reminiscent of the slave days. In his dealings with everyoneexcept the anglos, Owens was an outsider, and it is a tribute to his